


the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

by lizimajig



Category: Norse Mythology, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Angst, Community: norsekink, F/M, Feels, Fluff, OTP since age ten, Ragnarok, just saying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-09
Updated: 2012-07-09
Packaged: 2017-11-09 12:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizimajig/pseuds/lizimajig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Hello teacher tell me, what's my lesson? / Look right through me, look right through me</i><br/>Loki's burden is remembering everything, and that is his real curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

**Author's Note:**

> From [a prompt](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/9985.html?thread=21523457#t21523457) on norsekink, wherein the prompter asked for Loki being comforted after a nightmare. Sooooo I did it. Do not own, etc.

Lives come and lives go, years pass but Ragnarok is always the same. Loki is drenched in the blood of it, centuries after centuries, leaving the sanguine footprints in his wake. 

He knows the sign posts, pointing him and everyone else to their downfall, but he's the only one who reads them. They all go willingly towards their violent ends. A couple of times he's tried to stop it, but you can never stop fate, only delay it. He's stopped trying to warn them. 

Sometimes the only way to cope is by causing chaos, harmless and the less harmless kind. When you know the end of the story, the only thing you can do is enjoy the chapters in between. 

\---

_He grins a wild grin, bloodstained and terrible; to look at him is to see Fenrir as his father's son for the first time. He has a sword -- not his weapon of choice, that's how he knows this is a dream (or a nightmare) and he is slashing, slashing, slashing through the air. It whistles on its way down until it stops with the sharp thunk of a sharp blade cutting through raw meat. Bones crack and blood flows. Not like a river -- there is no poetic imagery to describe the manner in which bright red blood drips onto snow._

_That's also how he knows this is a dream (nightmare). He's seen blood lost in real life; rarely is it such a vivid color in such large quantities._

_"Make it stop," he begs. **Schnick** , the blade falls heavy again. "Stop."_

_"Stop." **Schnick.**_

_"STOP."_

_Without clear cause, Loki now bleeds onto the snow, hot blood staining armor, clothing, skin, snow -- it's everywhere. "Stop," he repeats, more weakly. But there is no stopping the end from coming, only delay._

_He is going to die, his children will die, his brother, wife, fathermotherfriendsenemies --_

_"Please. Stop."_

\---

"Loki! Wake, husband, please!"

Sigyn's voice cuts through the fog the nightmare leaves him in, bringing him back to waking. He wonders how many times she's pulled him from the swift current of a bloody dream, in this reality and the last, or the one before that -- he doubts such a number has been counted. He starts awake, gasping for breath like a drowning man, and for a moment he's very aware of his surroundings. He's drenched in sweat, which might or might not be why his cheeks are wet, and even though he's still laid out on his back, Sigyn is sitting up, hovering over him. He has one of her wrists in a death grip, as though she were an enemy he would stop rather than another part of himself that he would have close always. 

He finally gulps in a second breath, and drops her wrist. "I -- I apologize," he manages. He's starting to finally hear the pounding in his ears from his heart racing. "Did I hurt you?"

"No. No, my love," she replies. Her hand tenderly brushes the hair back from his forehead, and then down to one cheek to wipe away the dampness there. "Only startled me."

She is unshakeable, and he wishes that quality for himself. He kisses the inside of her wrist, then the palm of her hand where is rests against his face. Satisfied that he is awake and no longer trapped in his sleep, she lays back down and lets him wrap about her like a snake around the arm of its keeper. His head lays on her breast, and one hand drifts down her side and rests on the rising swell of her belly. _Narvi_. He knows his son's name as well as he knows his own, just like he knows everything else. This is a less troubling burden. 

Sigyn puts one hand over his and begins to stroke his hair in comfort with the other, gently murmuring nothing special as her fingers comb through his dark hair. "What were you dreaming of?" she asks, once he's begun to relax, the rhythm of her heart under his ear calling to his. 

He doesn't answer for a moment. "Blood," he says finally, a succinct reply to a complicated, uncomfortable question. "Did I say anything?"

"Only 'stop'," she answers, and kisses the top of his head. "You needn't speak any more of it if you don't wish to," she adds.

He shakes his head, best he can, as he has no intention of moving from this spot until circumstances require otherwise. "I'm sorry if I woke you."

"I was awake. Your child bested you in that, I'm afraid," she says, gently teasing. 

"Really." That was new. 

"Really. A very active little one," she explains. "I hope you are quite content to have me as I am, because I'm afraid that this one is cutting into beauty sleep." 

"You have no need of it," he answers honestly and immediately. 

"Shameless flattery," she accuses lovingly.

"Truth," he counters, and listens to her sigh, likely part in exasperation but also from love. He smiles when the babe pushes against his hand from inside his mother's womb.

"A boy or a girl," she asks suddenly. 

"With any luck at all, it shall be one or the other," he replies, not totally serious.

"You are teasing me, husband." Sigyn doesn't seem to be in doubt that her child will be anything but a healthy, normal looking child, even given her husband's previous issue. Though Loki's sons with Sigyn have yet to be anything but healthy, pink, and by all accounts _normal_ in any cycle, a piece of him always wonders if this time will be the one where that is not the case. 

"Girl," he decides suddenly, without really knowing why.

"Really." It's not precisely doubt that tinges her voice but she seems amused. "Why?"

_I should like to be wrong about something, just once._ "Why not?" he returns.

"No reason." Her hand has slowed on his head; she now merely curls the ends around her slender fingers. "It seems as though men always want sons."

He can finally close his eyes again without seeing the splash of crimson on snow. "If they were all as kind as you," he murmurs, "I should welcome a score of daughters."

Sigyn sighs again, this time a contented little noise, and she kisses him on the head. "Sleep, my darling. There is nothing in the night that can harm you."

It's not a lie precisely, it's what you tell the child who is afraid of the monsters under his bed or just beyond the city walls. But he lets his eyes drop closed again, and listens to Sigyn's steady heart until he drifts off again, away from his nightmares of what has been and what will come again.


End file.
